Dan Smith

Dan Smith is a non-resident Senior Fellow at UNIDIR. Based in Stockholm, he researches and writes on international security and is involved in facilitating dialogue between contending parties.

Previously, he was Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (2015–2025), Secretary General of International Alert (2003–2015), and Director of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (1993-2001). He chaired the UN Peacebuilding Fund Advisory Group (2010–11) and was Professor of Peace and Conflict at the University of Manchester (2014-2017).

Dan has researched and written on a wide range of peace, conflict and security issues for five decades. His current interests focus on mediation, ecological security, geopolitics and the crisis in the world order, geostrategy and the new arms race, and regional security politics in the Middle East and in Northeast Asia. 

His authored works include five editions of The State of the World Atlas from 1999 to 2020, four editions of The State of War and Peace Atlas from 1983 to 2003, and three editions of The State of the Middle East Atlas from 2006 to 2015. Recent policy reports include Five urgent questions on ecological security (2023, co-authored with Rod Schoonover) and Elements of a Planetary Emergency (2022, lead author).